As with most young people, Alex C. Knapp’s eyes and thumbs are incessantly occupied by a smartphone — even while driving.

“I’m the worst in the world when it comes to that,” the 22-year-old college student said, adding that he has routinely mixed steering with acts including uploading photos to Facebook.

JOHN C. WHITEHEAD, The Patriot-News
A poll on PennLive asked readers: How often do you text and drive? More than 1,000 readers participated. A slight majority (54 percent) said they never text and drive. Still, that means almost half of the respondents said they do so. Nearly 20 percent said they rarely do it. Conversely, 11 percent said they text and drive very often, and another 15 percent said they do it occasionally.

Knapp, of Lower Paxton Twp., admitted it has resulted in heart-stopping events such as a sudden realization that he has drifted from his lane.

That’s why he willingly accepts Pennsylvania’s new ban on texting while driving.

It took an accumulation of deaths in car crashes caused by texting or other device-induced distraction.

Yet many say the texting ban isn’t enough.

Look for a push to ban using a handheld cellphone while driving in Pennsylvania this year.

“I think it’s coming,” said Rep. Kathy Watson, a Bucks County Republican. “I think someone will introduce it in the next session.”

State Rep. Eugene DePasquale, a Democrat from York, said, “I think we’re going to have to ban the handheld cellphone.”

A veteran police chief, Stephen Margeson of the Carlisle Police Department, said, “I hate to be a person who says more regulation is necessary ... but I really think in the interest of safety, a handheld ban to go along with the texting ban would be better.”

So far, nine states and the District of Columbia ban use of handheld cellphones while driving, although 30 states ban it for novice drivers.

A handheld ban?

Knapp has a job that requires him to drive around the state as a facilitator for youth programs. He said the texting ban caused him to curb his texting even before it took effect.

But he doesn’t agree with the need for extending it to handhelds, arguing there are tactics such as running the phone through the car’s sound system that reduce the risk.

And how will it be enforced with people using handheld phones for purposes such as GPS navigation?

“That’s the biggest excuse the cops will get,” Knapp said.

As Knapp spoke, his friend, Bekah Hostetter, thumbed her smartphone.

The 20-year-old Harrisburg Area Community College student said that even without a ban she would “absolutely not” text while driving. She also supports a similar ban on handhelds. She has had too many near-misses involving drivers who were clearly distracted by phones, she said.

View full sizeSean Simmers, The Patriot-News/fileBumper sticker on the vehicle of John Cirillo of Harrisburg, whose partner, Carolyn Henry, was killed in 2009 in an accident caused by a texting driver.

“There are already so many bad things that can happen while you are driving. ... I need to completely focus on my driving,” the Linglestown resident said.

Twenty-year-old Zachary Berliner said he texts while driving “pretty frequently.”

He contends some people, including him, are capable of doing it safely. Moreover, he doesn’t think the ban will change the behavior of people who feel compelled to text.

Nor does the Middletown resident see any benefit in a ban on heldhelds. “I feel that’s even worse — now we’re going to have drivers pulling over on the highway and taking another risk,” he said.

More distractions for drivers

One wild card in trying to regulate distracted driving is the evolution of mobile devices. It’s an open question whether technological “advancements” will reduce or increase the distractions.

The number of cellphones in the United States already has surpassed the population. Now the upswing is toward smartphones — cellphones that enable users to send text messages and access email and the Internet.

Last year saw record sales of smartphones, with nearly 500 million sold worldwide. The number is expected to double by 2016.

Thirty-five percent of U.S. adults own a smartphone, according to the Pew Internet Project. The average adult sends or receives 42 text messages per day. People age 18 to 24 average 110 messages per day.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates 13.5 million U.S. drivers are on a handheld cellphone at any given time. A study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute concluded that an unsafe incident is 163 times more likely if a driver is texting, emailing or using the Internet.

Yet another mounting concern is the distraction caused by factory-installed electronic devices in cars, such as navigation, climate-control and entertainment systems.

“Traditionally, food and drink have been the big distractions. I think they’re being edged out by the electronics,” said Rob Mott, coordinator of the South Central Pennsylvania Highway Safety program.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Transportation proposed guidelines for auto manufacturers in an effort to minimize distractions posed by on-board electronic devices. The guidelines aim to reduce the complexity of on-board systems and the time needed to operate them.

Meanwhile, the push to ban handheld cellphones is growing.

In December, the National Transportation Safety Board, which has power only to advise, urged states to ban the use of all portable electronic devices while driving. The organization said more than 3,000 people died in distraction-related crashes in 2010.

In Pennsylvania, 13,806 crashes were caused by distracted driving in 2010, resulting in 65 deaths, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

Of those, 1,093 crashes and 11 deaths were attributed to handheld phones.

And PennDOT spokeswoman Erin Waters believes the true number is higher, because police reports often rely on an admission from the driver. Absent that, or a witness, it is very hard to connect the crash to an electronic device.

On the other hand, it’s becoming routine for investigators to obtain cellphone records in serious crashes.

One example of the evidence trail left by devices followed a 2010 crash in Missouri in which the driver of a pickup truck ran into a tractor-trailer that had slowed down. The subsequent chain-reaction crash involved two school buses, killed two people and injured 38. The investigation found that the pickup driver sent and received 11 texts in the 11 minutes before the crash.

Some argue the distraction of just a phone conversation, even with a handsfree device, is too hazardous to allow.

The PennDOT figures include 45 crashes related to using a handsfree phone. There were no deaths in those crashes.

At work behind the wheel

Modern economics and electronics have combined to turn the car into an office on wheels. That will surely fuel impassioned arguments against mobile-device restrictions.

Lawyers tell of racking up hundreds of billable hours behind the wheel. People in jobs such as sales say they couldn’t adequately serve their customers if not for the ability to do so while driving.

“What will be the loss of productivity if 100 million Americans are less able to do their work as they drive?” local defense lawyer Karl Rominger asked, reacting to a possible ban on cellphones while driving.

While Rominger noted he doesn’t necessarily oppose a ban, he argued that it would be unfair if it didn’t apply to other distractions, such as eating, applying makeup or fiddling with a radio while driving.

“If we want to be intellectually honest, we should first ban eating and drinking in the car,” he said.

Regarding Pennsylvania’s texting ban, Rominger said it was a mistake to make it a primary rather than a secondary offense. Were it a secondary offense, police could cite a driver only if they pulled him over for another offense.

Rominger believes making it a primary offense opens the door to a loss of privacy.

“It will become the excuse for stopping anyone an unprincipled officer wants to stop,” he said.

‘Too little too late’

John Cirillo of Harrisburg lost the love of his life, Carolyn Henry, as a result of a handheld electronic device.

Pennsylvania Texting While Driving Ban John Cirillo, of Harrisburg, lost his long-time partner, Carolyn Henry, a Harrisburg school teacher, who was killed in June, 2009 when her car was struck by a vehicle operated by a texting driver on Union Deposit Road in Susquehanna Twp. A new state law requiring Pennsylvania drivers to pull over and stop if they want to text takes effect March 8.

Henry is the beloved Harrisburg reading teacher who died in 2009 after her car was hit by a car driven by a young woman who was talking and texting on her cellphone.

The driver received probation rather than a prison sentence only because Cirillo and Henry’s family decided Henry would want the woman to have the chance to learn from the mistake.

Cirillo regards the new texting ban as “too little too late.”

He wants a ban extending to all handheld cellphones.

The 64-year-old said he’s amazed that technology can enable such communication feats yet can’t somehow disable it when the user is operating a car.

And he’s perplexed and saddened that so many people don’t grasp how badly they can hurt someone and all that person’s loved ones as a result of a phone call or text that could easily wait.

“It’s a shame that people don’t get it until they’re the one planning a memorial service,” he said.

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